arkham asylum

Comics have seized center stage at the venerable British Library in London this summer in an exhibition celebrating the history of British comics and the work of British creators. Subtitled, 'Art and Anarchy in the UK', the Comics Unmasked exhibition places an emphasis on protest, outsider culture, and anti-authoritarian voices.

Curated by Adrian Edwards, Paul Gravett, and John Harris Dunning, Comics Unmasked draws heavily on the British Library's own collection to establish and define Britain's relationship to the comics art form -- stirring up nostalgia, scandal, and some surprising discoveries along the way. And Kieron Gillen's giant head.

I don't think I'm blowing anyone's mind here when I say that Arkham Asylum has more personality than any other building in comics. Heck, it's got more personality than a lot of characters. I can't think of any comics or video games named after, say, The Daily Planet Building or even Avengers Mansion, but something about Arkham keeps drawing people back to obsessing over it. My guess is that it's the interior gargoyles.

What will blow your mind, though, is a LEGO creation built over the course of a year by Thornsten Bosch, alias Xenomurphy, depicting a mass breakout at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It's one of the most beautifully crafted, painstakingly detailed and flat-out massive LEGO sets I've ever seen, based loosely on Chicago's Tribune Building. Check out some amazing shots below!

Q: Does Arkham have any success stories and if not, how does it continue to get funding? -- @TheMikeLawrence

A: I'll be honest with you, Mike: If you look at it logically, Arkham Asylum is a genuinely terrible mental hospital. Heck, even if you just look at it by the standards of comic book penal institutions, which only exist so that crooks can escape from them and occasionally provide something for Hank Pym to do in his spare time so he's not just some weird due who stares at an ant farm all day, Arkham is just the worst.

But really, it's not so much what Arkham has done that keeps it around, as what it has the potential to do.

It's ComicsAlliance's first day back, and our return is due in large part to our readers, many of whom showed up nearly every day to show support even when the site all but shut down. After all of that, we felt the need to show our appreciation in some small way, and we figured handing out some cool stuff was at least a pretty good start, so we've teamed up with our new sister sites Arcade Sushi and ScreenCrush to set up a giveaway of this Batman: Arkham Asylum Breakout Lego Set.

As previously reported, a third game in the Batman Arkham series, Batman: Arkham Origins, is coming out this year, Game Informer has revealed. It'll be out on October 25. But it's not what fans of the series might expect, for a few reasons.

There've been a number of sprawling Batman Lego sets, but the latest to be unveiled at BrickCon 2012 in Seattle over the weekend may be the most impressive yet. In January Batman fans will be able to pick up Lego DC Universe Super Heroes set #10937, Arkham Asylum. At 1,351 pieces

With over two million copies sold in its first week of release, it's pretty safe to say that Batman: Arkham City, the new game in which Batman punches his way through a massive prison built out of Gotham City itself, is a pretty big hit. That means that we're pr

Here at ComicsAlliance, we value our readership and are always open to what the masses of Internet readers have to say. That's every week, Senior Writer Chris Sims puts his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions!

Over the past 23 years, there have been twenty different games starring the Dark Knight, and more if you count the different systems! ComicsAlliance has looked at the highs and lows of Batman's video game career from his 8-bit origins and unlicensed Shinobi cameo to his Lego and Mortal Kombat team-ups!

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